The Third Draft Begins -or- Feeling Sisyphean

Today I started the third draft of The Fraternity of Greed and I'm quite well aware at this point that the Third Draft is the most important and probably most demanding with regards to personal critique as well as artistic creativity.  Too bad I'm a Math guy, but I see the logic in the process at least.  Like I said before, the third draft, using the metaphor of a car renovation is where most of the real work is done.  The first draft just ensures that the car drives, then the third draft is where anything and everything that is old is thrown away and replaced with beautiful shiny new parts.  The car is reborn at this point.

So considering it took me a solid 3 months to do the second draft (including my month off), I'm hoping I can do this in the same amount of time.  As the title suggests I'm feeling a bit like Sisyphus with his boulder right now.



So with that though I do have to give a shout out to Marette Myers (my mother in law) and Michael Miles (my good friend) who took the time to give me the fodder to really tackle the third draft well.  Mike went so far as to request a meeting at the Downing Street Pub referred to in the novel so that he could tell me his ideas on the plot.  And, let me tell you they were great ideas.  (I'm not saying I'll do all of them, Mike, but you definitely had some great stuff).

And Marette, ever the logical minded like myself, found several characters acting in ways that didn't make a great deal of sense considering their assumed backgrounds and of course she found several Deus Ex Machina moments for me to try and deal with.  For those of you that don't know, I've recently learned as well, Deus Ex Machina, or the "God out of the Machine" is a moment in the plot when something is resolved or problem is created because of an unexpected addition to the story.  Take this, as an example, if you are a fan of the show House, like I am, you know doubt remember when the show first started that it was completely reasonable to predict the final diagnosis based on the symptoms the patient presented.  Now that the show has run its course, the writers are forced to throw last minute twists 10 minutes before the end of the show that reveal the diagnosis conveniently to Dr. House and much to my egotistical frustration faster than I can figure out.

So, to prevent my readers from humbling frustrations and to provide them with a plot worth remembering I will go about my quest for the every important third draft.  I take a swig of my bourbon rocks, fire open Microsoft Word, give a high five to my buddy Sisyphus (who wishes he had a bourbon straight up I think) and get to work.

Extended Stay

The editing of Fraternity of Greed continues and in the interim I'm continuing to keep my chops up with short stories.  I just published this last weekend Extended Stay to Amazon for the Kindle.  While I certainly didn't break the bank with downloads of Massacre in the Suburbs, it's nice to able to get something out and available to the public for critique quickly and easily. 



I just wanted to take a second to talk about the writing process for Extended Stay since it was different from Massacre in the Suburbs.  I took a page from Stephen King's advice on writing that the first draft of writing should be completely private.  It's very difficult, especially when you finish a good passage or come up with something you're particularly proud of not to share it with everyone, but I found that keeping the story to myself helped keep me on track.  I then opened up the story to editing help to friends and family close to me and found that it was much more useful.  In fact, three of the editors noted the same plot issue which I had overlooked and was able to correct. 

Starting the story was interesting though.  If you search down on the blog you'll find an entry entitled Extended Stay.  It was simply just a creative ramble I did one night when I needed to write.  I posted it on this blog and several folks said reading it made them want to know more about the narrator.  I then took that little snip of a story, turned it into a letter and built a character and plot around it.  The final product is quirky and weird making you scratch your head but I kind of like that result.  It added depth to the character which was hard to do in 15 or so pages.

Finally the picture I used for the "cover" if you can really call it a cover, since it is for Kindle, is a picture I took of the inside of a wine bottle, looking into the neck while I pointed the bottle at a nearby light.  The result is a kind of sick overwhelming feeling, that I think really defines the agoraphobia the main character feels. 

If you feel like purchasing it, go to Amazon: Extended Stay and purchase for .99 cents!  Not too bad for about 30 minutes of entertainment in my opinion.  You can also head to my Author page at Amazon: Jeff Shipp to see short stories as I publish them or posts from this blog as well.